Category Archives: Nesting

Well today is day 1 in the third year of waiting, can I just say ugh. We went live with our agency on April 5th, 2013 which seems so long ago now. It has been hard to stomach that we have not adopted yet since our agency has a 80% adoption rate by the time you have been waiting 2 years. While Andy and I both still hope and feel like this is the year it is going to happen, this particular milestone to reach has been a little more difficult than the others. We are both so ready to be parents and the not knowing of when it will happen is getting harder. Both of us feel like if we knew the date that it would happen, even if that date was a year in the future, it would be easier knowing and not stressing about the wait so much.

Since knowing the date is not something we can know until it actually happens we are both making some changes in our lives. We are getting a couple doctor’s visits taken care of, looking into churches to attend, joining a gym (that has a pool in case I want to swim), looking at purchasing a new car, etc. It is also time to do some more projects around the house and we are looking forward to a few trips coming up over the next several months, including one this weekend to visit our nephews in Texas. We typically have very busy lives in general and we haven’t put anything off during the wait that we want to do, other than a couple really large trips (like Europe or a cruise). As the wait continues it is just finding other things we want to do before we have a child that will make travel or date nights more difficult.

Over the last week we did get the chance to have a date night and see the movie Home, which was hilarious and awesome. It has been a little while since our last date night just because of my changing jobs and Andy’s crazy schedule of photography in the spring. Also, we used Andy’s new smoker to do up some delicious ribs and have my parents over for dinner. They turned out great and next time we will try and improve upon them by cooking them even lower and slower. We finished up the week with a little Easter celebrating with the family. My mom and dad had us and my aunt’s family over for a ham dinner last night. It was delicious food and fun to catch up with the family a little bit.

I have been thinking one way to kick off the new year of waiting is to start a thankfulness/positives jar. Where every day we try and put in 1 thing positive that happened or 1 thing that we are thankful for that day. While we can then focus on the good things that are happening for us and around us we can hopefully stress less about the wait. Today I am thankful for everyone that has supported us so far in this adoption process. It is amazing to see over 1000 people on our Facebook page that have been following on our journey, the people we have met in support groups help to keep us sane when we feel like no one else can understand what we are going through, and our friends and family are anxious to see us as parents and look forward to updates no matter what the update is.

Friday night was a great start to the weekend! We attended a wedding of friends of ours. It was a beautiful simple ceremony out by a gazebo before heading in for the reception. We had a lot of fun visiting friends that we haven’t seen in a while and also dancing for a couple hours. We are already talking about trying to get together again with them soon so it isn’t so long between seeing each other!

Saturday I helped my mom make a fairy garden at her house, went out to a late lunch to surprise her for her birthday and watched Andy take pictures at a Cross Fit competition. Her fairy garden turned out really cute and was fun to put together. She had already bought the fairy and some of the other little things but we had to find a container and the plants to put in it still. After that we went to my mom’s favorite restaurant for a surprise lunch (my dad brought her and the family that lives in town all was there to surprise her). The food there is so good and you can’t help but eat too much food. Over eating though made me feel guilty later in the evening while watching the Cross Fit competition. Those people are amazing at what they can do! Looking forward to seeing how Andy’s images turn out from the competition for everyone.

Sunday was a slower day with hanging out around the house being the prime objective. We did however do some cleaning down in the basement for a couple hours and had home made deep dish pizza for lunch. See below to be jealous!

Andy and I recently tried to install the infant car seat that we bought into the Jetta just in case we get a last minute call. We don’t want to be picking up a baby and worried that we don’t know how to install it or that the seat isn’t installed correctly.

We got the seat into the car and level, although it seemed to be moving a lot more than it is supposed to (they are only suppose to move up to an inch when it is latched/belted down). We tried to tighten the straps more for the seat but they just weren’t getting any tighter. Next there needed to be a stop at the fire house to find out what we are doing wrong or what we need to do better.

Andy took the car to the fire house, since I was out of town, by himself and they helped him to get the seat in the car better and now it is much more secure. They also instructed him on how to properly have a child strapped into the seat and how to tighten/loosen the straps as needed. Although we would have liked to put the seat in the middle it just wasn’t going to work in this car with this particular seat.

Well we have been waiting over a year now on the wait list through our adoption agency. At times the year has flown by and at others it can seem like it was interminable. So much has happened while we were waiting which helps us not stress too much. From working on putting together a nursery so when it happens we have everything ready and everything we will need, hanging out with friends and family in town (getting our fill of holding little babies when we could), and traveling to visit family and friends it has been an incredible past year.

We hope that we don’t cross the next year mark still waiting to start our family but it is also a possibility since for the most part it is up to a birth mother/father choosing us as parents. As we have mentioned previously being over a year does at least mean we are now on the last minute list for the agency which could be better for us and mean an adoption sooner but only time will tell.

I will be working on a new post about the final product of the nursery hopefully soon since we are almost finished with setting it up and getting everything ready/decorated until we bring home a child. While we work on that we also have a lot of travels and things coming up over the coming months to keep us busy so we will try and keep the blog moving forward with updates if/when we have them!

This weekend in addition to going to Babies R Us to pick up a few extra things that we want to have before we bring home a baby we also did some things around the house for the baby. Friday night we bought some plain white onesies, baby shampoo, baby laundry detergent, hats, socks, mittens (so they don’t scratch their face), a boppy pillow, mattress covers, bassinet sheets/covers, and a couple of other outfits we thought were cute. It was one of our last big shopping trips we would need before we have a placement so it was nice to get it done and out of the way. Everything else for shopping is now extra and not needed the first night we would come home!

Today after we ran some errands and went to a car show we decided to do somethings around the house for the baby room. We put up a wall decal that we have had for a while, finally painted the side table for by the glider, and painted the letters for the reading corner. I have posted some pictures of the work in progress below and will show them in the room when we finish it. The room is definitely coming together at this point and now we only have a few more things to get done and we will be ready to sit and wait!

We now have two great car seats ready for whenever we place with a child. One we bought on sale at babies r us and the other was from my aunt Laura who doesn’t need it any longer for her son. Other than a stroller this was one of the last big things that we needed to purchase in the process of getting our baby room done.

Well we got the glider in the mail earlier this week and finally got to put it together today! Here are some pictures of how it turned out. It seems really comfortable from the short time I sat in it which will make sitting in there rocking a baby to sleep easier in the middle of the night.

Andy and I had a fun Saturday today. We started out going to a wheel chair basketball practice so he could take some photos from last season to the coach and to take some more pictures at practice with the new team members. Afterwards, while we were heading home, I suggested we wander around the outlet mall by our house to just check out what there all was on sale.

We ended up going to several of the kids stores and browsed for cute gender neutral clothes. This is the selection we were able to come up with! Other than a couple in the 0-3 months size they are all bigger so it might be a while until they are used but we have them!

Our favorites were probably the Introducing me red onesie and the blue one with a camera on it! Can’t wait to have a cutie to try these on and take more photos of them in.

Andy and I got some gift cards for Amazon in the mail last week so we decided to go ahead and order some more of the things for the house that we will need when we bring a baby home. Today we got a bunch of packages and get to put everything together tonight and add it to the baby room!

Right now it looks like the list of must have baby items for when we first bring home the baby is becoming smaller and smaller! We do have a couple of big purchases left that we want to have while we are waiting to match with our birth mother though, like a glider for the baby room, stroller, and baby monitor.

It is exciting to see the baby room come together like it has so far and how much we have gotten from friends and family as gifts. Since we have so many expenses already for the adoption it has been great to not need to spend the money on some of the pieces.

With all the rain we have been getting lately going out and doing yard work or spending time at the pool has just not been feasible so today I decided we should finally get to work on some of our little DIY projects for the baby room.

I had bought this cool brass lamp at a Good Will type of store for only $3 but it needed some updating with a new shade and some fresh paint (brass just isn’t my thing). So today I finally got around to sanding and painting the lamp the orange color that we are adding to the nursery. It turned out awesome if I say so myself and now we just need to order the white shade that I found online!

Our second little project was making a chalk board for the baby room. We have the chalkboard paint that you can put on the walls but I wanted something a little less permanent in case we rearrange the baby room at some point. Instead we bought a big piece of plywood and some molding pieces and started the painting. We got most of the way through it but when it is finished it will be a black chalk board with an orange molding border set up around it like a frame. Then all we have to do is hang it or move it as needed. 🙂

Going to need to look for some other projects to work on for the baby room now!